Something we can all learn from

In looking for a refugee story from popular media, I found many that were of refugees still overseas, however, I searched farther for one that shared a refugee’s trip to America, one like those shown in Of Beetles and Angels and God Grew Tired of Us. I have found these stories so much more impactful on my learning of refugees than any other text we have researched in class. It not only shows their struggle in settings we as American college students can barely imagine, but also shows their struggle in a place we are more than familiar with, our own homes. I found an article, a very recent one actually having just been published today, titled “Iraqi Refugees Find A Complicated New Home in Mass.” The article begins with explaining the event that started a massive influx of Iraqi refugees to America exactly ten years ago today, the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad’s Firdos Square. While this seemed like a promising end to the dictator’s regime, it in fact was the beginning to a long era of violence and civil war in Iraq. Since then, thousands of Iraqis have fled to America in search of peace, with many of them landing in the greater Boston Area. The article tells the story of 3 very different Iraqi refugees and their new lives living in Massachusetts.

The first refugee that the article covers is Anas al-Hamdani, who has found a job washing dishes at MIT. While he is looking to achieve more now as an American citizen, al-Hamdani is thankful that he was able to escape the violence of Iraq. “His life in America hasn’t been easy. But he’s safe, and he says that counts for a lot when you know how it feels to be kidnapped, beaten up by insurgents, and stuffed into a trunk” described the author. The next refugee, Iman Shati, after leaving a three-car garage, garden, and spacious house in Baghdad for the safety of Massachusetts, created the Iraqi and Arab Community Association in Lynn, MA. After seeing that her son, who held a profession as an engineer in Iraq, now worked a kitchen job just to pay the rent, Shati knew the Iraqi refugees needed somewhere to help with job training as well as English language learning to assist in their assimilation to American culture. The final refugee covered in the article is Muna Al-Hamood, an ESL student in Shati’s classes. After militants in Iraq killed her son three months ago, she brought the rest of her family to America. From a clothing designer in Iraq to teetering on the edge of homelessness in America, Al-Hamood is thankful for all that Shati is doing to help her fellow Iraqi refugees.

I found each story in this article extremely interesting to read about and saw many similarities to the stories of Mawi and the Lost Boys. While Mawi’s father was an extremely successful and talented doctor back in Africa, he could only get a job as a janitor at Wheaton College in America. And while many of the Lost Boys were very intelligent, they were all subjected to very high labor intensive and low pay jobs. While all of these refugees either had better jobs back in the country they left, or had the skill sets to apply for one, none of them were given the opportunity to show this skill set when they came to America. They were only given the chance to apply for jobs well below their abilities and well below the pay required to pay rent, let alone raise a family in many of their situations. However, while many Americans searching for work put down these jobs, they are welcome in open arms by the refugees. Panther, one of the lost Boys who came to America to live in what I remember as Syracuse, held a job bussing tables at a hotel restaurant. While seen as a menial job by many in American society, Panther could not be happier doing it. The size of the smile on his face when the camera crew interviewed him about his job told it all. He was genuinely happy about what he did and that he was making money not only to support himself but also his fellow Lost Boys back in Africa. I also saw that as a theme stretching across the refugees of all countries and backgrounds, their need to help others like themselves, no matter how much extra work it takes. John Buhl, one of the Lost Boys, described how hard it was to make enough money to send to his brothers back in Africa, as if it was a necessity. He was in no way bound to send back money, but it was a promise he had made, and he kept it no matter how little that left him to actually live on in New York. A similar scene could be seen with Shati’s Iraqi and Arab Community Association. While not sending back to those in Iraq, she helped those out who were struggling in America. What I have come to learn from refugees is that no matter how much struggle and pain they have gone through, is that they are always wanting to help those even worse off than themselves, and this is something that I think everyone, refugee or not, can learn from in their lives.

The Unique Nature of a Refugee Story

After finishing Mawi Asgedom’s account of his life from a refugee camp in Sudan to his eventual graduation from Harvard in Of Beetles and Angels as well as watching the lives of 3 refugees in their movement from a camp to America in God Grew Tired of Us, along with reading articles by both Fadlallal and Hron regarding the lives of refugees, I have come to learn much more about what it means to be a refugee, and the life that they go through in their lives in camps and then in the “lucky” one’s trips and eventual lives in America. The largest thing that I have learned, and the one that can be seen through almost all of our texts, is that these refugees are more than just stories, they’re people too. What Fadlallal and Hron are lacking in their articles, is this element. Similar to many mass media stories relating to foreign refugees, namely those in Africa, is that they are called just that, refugees. They are not given a name. Hron’s article begins with many overarching “summary”-like descriptions of refugees and immigrants. They are depicted in a sense of all having experienced the same thing, with no unique stories or circumstances. They remain constrained in anonymity in being described as a group. They are always described as one, singular, group of people instead of many, unique, individuals.

This is where I believe the writing of Asgedom and the following of the Lost Boys in God Grew Tired of Us really encompasses this idea of individuality. They each highlight the idea of a person over the idea of a group. While Mawi does spend a lot of time in his book describing the actions and beliefs of his people, he also counters them with a connection to himself and his immediate family. He shares the personal accounts of his connections with teachers and coaches in High School, and brings forward the emotionally gut wrenching stories of losing both his father and brother to two separate drunk driving accidents. In watching God Grew Tired of Us, we can see a very similar connection. We are not shown a generalized account of what happens when a refugee comes to America, we are shown specific stories of what it was like for each of them. And although they all came from exactly the same place, their eventual journeys are all very different. It would be asinine to say that each boy had a similar or “the same” experience in being a refugee in America. They each experienced their new life quite differently, much like each refugee story is just as unique as the next.

Refugee Stories

I believe that a refugee story is not much more different than any other story told. While yes, many of their stories include events and memories that many of us could never possibly understand or put ourselves in their position, but at the same time, as seen in God Grew Tired of Us and Mawi Asgedom’s Of Beetles and Angles many of their recollections in their journey to America have been stories that have been told for generations.

In both Mawi’s narrative of coming to America in the mid 80s and that of Daniel, Panther, and John Buhl coming in the mid 2000s, we can see a very similar story. They shared a conflict in leaving their friends and family, and then once in America, they all struggled to find a fitting place in society. From Mawi and his struggles in elementary school, to the Lost Boy’s battles with balancing work, paying bills, and fighting back the crushing loneliness of living alone after being surrounded by “brothers” for 15 years, we can see some striking similarities.

But through this entire struggle, this is not the first time this story has been told in America. Refugees are simply the latest addition to the long list of those people who have come to America looking for a better life. “So it was that my father started talking about a paradise called Amerikha, a distant land where everyone had a future. He told us that money grew on trees in Amerikha. Everyone was rich. Everyone had a home. Everyone had food. And Everyone had peace.” (Asgedom, 11) It is this picture of perfection given to America that has been around much longer than when Mawi and his family came to America in the 1980s. Millions of immigrants poured through Ellis Island around the turn of the century, all under the same impression as Mawi’s father, America was the promise land, there was happiness to be had in America. These immigrants faced the same plight, if not one worse, than the stories of the refugees. While refugees were given assistance from outside programs, those who came to America in the early 1900s did not have the same fate. Dropped on the shores of a foreign land, they were on their own, no one to check on them and whether or not they were surviving in this new, alien place.

Overall, while I believe that the refugee stories we have read and watched are indeed important and unique with their own personal stories, I do not believe they are so much different than other stories that have already been told. We have a very rich historical background living in America, and when one looks, they can find millions of stories just like those of the refugees.

"God Grew Tired of Us"

After watching what we have of God Grew Tired of Us, I have come to understand the plight of refugees, namely the Lost Boys, on a much deeper level. While it is easy to read and study about the journey that these boys (many of them now men) have taken, I don’t believe you actually get a real sense of what they are going through until you see it. And while watching it on a projector screen while sitting comfortably in a university classroom is completely different than being there, with the boys as they make their journey from Africa to America, it still brings you the closest emotional connection to their voyage. In reading Fadlalla’s article on refugees, I felt it, like many other sources, while trying to create an identity and place of belonging for refugees, still in their description loses the sense of humanity and personality of the refugees. They are described as a group, not individuals with each their own separate personality and character. This is where I believe God Grew Tired of Us excels. In watching their lives on the refugee camp to their journey across the world to America, we see the boys as people, not just a statistic. And not only do we see them as people in general, but people very similar to ourselves. Yes, they are boys living in a country thousands of miles from our own who have grown up in a situation I can not even imagine being in, they are still people. As inquisitive as young children on their first plane flight, the boys are so intent on learning about things we take for granted. However, this lack of knowledge was not what impacted me the most about the boys, it was their strong connection to each other. Without any true place to call home, they depended on each other for survival. They joke and laugh with each other in the camps, like they haven’t endured pain that no one else can imagine. They look after each other too, even when they are apart. In both Fadlalla’s article and God Grew Tired of Us the boys going to America had very concrete plans of making money to send back to their “family” in the camp. Overall, I think that what this movie has shown so far has broadened my knowledge and views of refugees ten-fold, and done more than show the facts, it has shown the people behind the statistics, and I can’t wait to see how their journey to America progresses. 

"Refugee" Revised

After reading the UNHC report on Protecting Refugees my eyes have been opened much wider to what it means to be a refugee. While before reading the article I really just looked at refugees as people who had fled their home country from racial and religious tensions, and in my first blog I explained this a little bit deeper, I now have come to know and understand the plight of a refugee on a much deeper level. While the definition crafted at the 1951 convention relating to the status of refugees stated “A refugee is someone who ‘owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of his nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail himself of the protection of that country…’” which is very similar to my initial definition of a refugee, I was completely unaware of the many levels that one can be a refugee. 

While the status of “refugee” is most well known, I was most surprised by finding out about other statuses such as “Asylum-Seeker”, “Internally Displaced Person”, and “Stateless Person”. Much like Native Americans that have been relocated from their native lands to “equal” lands in Oklahoma and the Dakotas, those who are under the status of Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) suffer the same fate. While they are still in their same home country and are claimed to have the same rights as they had before, they are essentially trapped in isolation. They were forced to leave their homes, which in many cases on both sides were the homes of many generations of family, and while given legally “equal” rights to those not under governmental or other political control, it is clear that their rights are in fact quite limited, as to not create further conflict. 

In terms of the African Community Center, I could not be more excited to begin working with the group. Already this year I have volunteered once a week at the Somali Community Center of Colorado, which like the ACC, helps refugees in their assimilation and new life in America. I assist in the tutoring of students grades K-8 on their daily homework as well as longer-term projects. In working with the Somali Center, I have come to have a deep respect for those I work with, many of which who are first generation immigrants from Somalia. I have learned about each of their diverse stories, and this is something that I also look forward to doing at the ACC. Like working at the Somali Center, I wish to help those who have come to this country in search of refuge and as well as not only helping them, I wish to grow my own horizons by learning about their own stories and knowledge, coming from such a different background than my own.